Surgical cutting or resection devices with drive units and rotating blades or burrs are commonplace in endoscopic surgery. Many current devices include a reusable drive unit and disposable rotating blades, burrs, or other attachments that are configured to couple to the reusable drive unit. During an endoscopic surgery, a surgeon may unknowingly apply forces to an instrument that have the potential of damaging the instrument or causing complications to the surgical procedure when using instruments of the previously existing designs.
It would be advantageous to provide surgical instruments for endoscopic surgery that are capable of monitoring forces applied to the instruments. It may be further advantageous to have the capability to provide alerts of one or more types that notify a user when load limits that have been set for forces applied to the instruments have been reached. Some improved embodiments may include methods of calibrating a cutting tool with integrated force sensors to provide an alert when load limits are reached and methods of calculating loads applied to a cutting tool.